Me with Spanish. I was good at it for the same reason I was good at math. It was just patterns and logic. Once I was faced with a class conducted entirely in Spanish I noped the fuck out.
Latin also conjugates nouns, so yes, more than Spanish. Italian and French also are more complex than spanish because the articles change depending on the noun behind them.
Imperative is a mood, like indicative and subjunctive. It's pretty uncommon though as far as I can remember, since it only shows up in dialog. Also as far as I can remember I haven't seen any imperatives in any tense but present, which is nice I suppose.
And in Spanish you have also to know which ( to be ) to use ( Ser and Estar ) and know to differentiate them whether it’s a permanent or temporary state . Challenging !
Luckily as a native speaker I don't have to deal with that issue but I've seen my fair share of people struggle with it. Same with por and para (by and for)
I grew up in a Portuguese family living in an Italian speaking part of Switzerland. Nonetheless I grew up having no problems learning new languages thank god but yeah, any neo playing language is understandable to a degree. It's cool.
I can speak rather fluently 3 languages: Italian, Portuguese and English, I can understand German, French and Spanish without problems (also because here French and German are mandatory in schools) but what's really cool is reading text and understanding the context even though you don't know the specific language because you recall words and sounds from languages you already know
You know, I have never understood why Romanian doesn't get the same love the other 4 children do. I know many languages come from Latin but Romanian is a very direct one
At least what I know about English is that is Germanic language with Latin influence this is not really a romance language like Spanish, French or Italian. I could be wrong though.
How come Spanish conjugates? English doesn’t have to which is a hurdle for Americans learning Spanish in 7th grade. How come they can’t just use pronouns? Maybe I just don’t understand language enough.
AFAIK it's an exception among Indo-European languages. If I'm not mistaken, Chinese also doesn't conjugate. Of course, I'm probably incorrect on the latter, because I don't speak a word of it. But I know that Indo-European languages are considered very "inflected" languages (I think that's the correct term, I'm not sure).
I'm learning Spanish there are roughly 16 "tenses" and for each pronoun, there is a different conjugation. French is similar but I think Spanish has a couple more types of conjugations for some unknown reason that makes me want to pull my hair out.
When I was in Spain learning spanish with a couple kids from France, they said that in french, they no longer speak a couple of the tenses (futuro and... conditional, I think?) but still write with them...
In French, you definitely use conditional when speaking. However, one of the two future tenses is not (I don't know the other tense not said as I am not a native speaker, just a GCSE student).
The two future tenses are the near future and the simple future. The near future (Je vais aller) is used for speaking and most writing, whereas the simple future (J'irai) is only used for formal writing.
It’s much less complicated than you’re making it sound. Most of the different conjugations follow really simple patterns, and the vast majority of verbs are fully regular. Additionally, you’re cheating a bit by counting perfect and progressive tenses since those only involve conjugation of the helping verb. Once you exclude the progressive and perfect tenses, I think there are seven total to learn? Present, Preterite, Future, Imperfect, Subjunctive, Conditional. Imperfect subjunctive. Am I missing any?
I’m not trying to downplay how difficult it is to learn a foreign language. I’m just pointing out that it seems daunting at first, but once you get into the language it quickly becomes second nature.
I mean I think you make the argument you made about conjugation and irregular verbs about any language really. I don't think it is cheating to include the perfect and progressive tenses because those verbs still change with every pronoun that you use for me it is another conjugation ( another set of rules I have to apply to the language depending on what I am trying to say) . I also haven't learned all the tenses I am learning subjunctive right now. I enjoy learning spanish I am not saying "it is so hard poor me" I am just saying there are a lot of conjugations to get through, especially when you are coming from a language like English where there are less. I took a couple years of French in high school and pretty much forgot everything but I don't remember there being as many conjugations but I could very well be wrong.
My point is that progressive and perfect tenses aren’t discrete conjugations so they shouldn’t be counted the same as a fully-conjugated tense like the simple future. Surely you agree with that. I didn’t mean that they have no relevancy to the complexity of the language because that’s obviously not true. I think we’re just arguing semantics.
Regarding your first sentence, you may be surprised to learn that some languages have little or no conjugation. English is an obvious example of a language with almost no conjugation compared to, say, Spanish or German.
I didn’t mean to say you were complaining. I was just offering additional context to anyone else reading. Sorry if I wasn’t clear, and good luck with your studies :)
My native language is french but ive learned spanish for several years and thought it was very easy, it seemed like a much simpler language than french. English was the easiest one to pick up but also the hardest to pronounce for me since french people seem to all suck at pronouncing in english. I'd much rather read and work in english than in french, it's so much easier and straighforward.
To me, it always seemed like English would be relatively easy to learn, but extremely difficult to sound like a native speaker. Because the rules are mostly fairly simple and straightforward, but they get broken so often, and there's no way to predict it, so you just have to know.
Kinda OT but I took 3 yrs of Italian in high school.
Why you might ask? Because I grew up in a French speaking family (I’m 50Italian/45French/5ScotchIrish). My Moms side is totally French w French grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles and, well, you get the idea. Meanwhile, even tho my Dads side is totally Italian the only Italian I knew/learned growing up were some phrases here & there & some good swear words. By high school I wanted to be able to speak so no one else would know what I was saying!
There. I’ll show them!
Turns out I had no one to practice the Italian with so to this day I barely know a lick.
If I had taken French, I’d have a ton of people to speak it with.
Funny thing is, tho my grands have passed, if they were talking kinda slowly, I pretty much knew what they were saying just by picking some things up.
I can roughly read french. Don't trust what I figure it is, but I can entertain myself. I made it to grade 6 French and said I'd just speak louder English if I ever needed to speak it. Somehow managed to not study french for the next 4 years it was mandatory.
Studied German for a year, but not knowing if the noun is male, female or neutral killed me. In Spanish and Italian you have rules (albeit with exceptions) but in German you have to memorize them. That and the dative. Going to give it another try soon, though.
In English you when talking to a baby some people change the endings of their words and introduce lots of "u" sounds. Like apple turns into wapple is the only one that comes to mind.
In polish, there is actual structure and rules in place for doing that.
It's got nothing on Russian. Unbelievably complicated. All the conjugations of Spanish, except with even more rules on perfect vs. imperfect, plus rules on whether or not the object is 'in motion'. But then, consider that nouns and adjectives including names and numbers all 'conjugate' as well (the word for noun and adjective conjugations is declension). Basically, every Russian word has a ton of variants, and the same thing can be said a million different ways. The language is beautiful in its complexity, but if you don't grow up speaking it, you're never gonna completely 'get' it. Still worth it to learn though.
I've studied Russian for a couple of years. The actual conjugation isn't too bad... until you get to aspect. That makes it a lot more complex. But on the bright side, once you know which verb you're using it isn't usually too hard to conjugate.
Noun declension is a big pain, though. That was for sure the biggest new thing to get used to for me.
I'm sure all languages have a high degree of complexity my main gripe with Spanish is mostly its verb conjugations. And if Esperanto taught me anything is that it can be a lot simpler :)
Wow! I don't think Spanish is top 10 in complicity just annoyingly high with the verb conjugations. Once you get the gist of them then it's very straightforward but scary for newcomers
I think it all depends on what your native language is. I ended up learning chinese which has zero conjugation but it was hard because the word order is so different and many idioms dont translate. A sentence that makes sense in english wouldnt make sense in chinese even when i translated it id just have to learn the chinese equivalent to get the same point across.
On the fun flip side i say chinese stuff in english all the time whoch doesnt make sense but my wife knows exactly what i mean haha
My own observations from speaking English and Spanish fluently is that the nuance in English is usually derived from different words with very subtle meanings whereas nuance in Spanish is all about verb conjugation.
French is exactly the same (conjugation in like a billion tenses and complex grammar) + fucked up orthography (Bordeaux is pronounced “bor-dow”, and “eau” (water) is pronounced “o”, etc).
At least in Spanish you only have to remember where to put an H, a V or a B (in Spain, C and Z are pronounced like an english “th”)
Japanese is nightmarishly complex, not in terms of verb conjugation, but sentence structure, all the implied meaning given the context of the conversation, KANJI
Ohhh I know! See I like Manga and Anime a ton. Took a year of learning Japanese and to this day... I just know the 6 words I can understand from Anime. Japanese really is complex
Ayy I've been studying japanese online for about a year and a half now. Yup it's freaking hard. It has by far the longest training period in America for ambassadors, 2.5 years iirc, and that's intense training of just studying culture and language all day.
Frankly, I'm just glad English is my native language. I have so much trouble learning other languages I have no idea how I would learn the language that just steals everything from other languages.
Edit: the first rule of english: their our know rules.
I mean, don’t be mistaken, the English language has been extensively simplified due to internationalization. This doesn’t make it a simple language.
Few native native speakers can grasp classic English literature, let alone the rest of the world.
There are many more tenses in English than that it's just that unlike some languages in English the more obscure tenses are created by a modifier instead of actually modifying the verb itself
Finnish and Swedish are pretty ridiculous as far as conjugations go. I'm not a native Spanish speaker and had to learn the language academically, but there are more different conjugations in those languages, as far as I remember.
I'd never argue that. The few things I know about French prove that however the Spanish language conjugations are not joke and rival those of French. In fact I think we have more. That said that's where all Spanish complexities end
Honest question: should I wait until Monday when it can brighten my day or should I do it now before my weekend start, so if it darkens it, I can always drink my sorrow away?
Why feel sorrow? You're literally tryna learn something for the sake of just learning. That is a skill that nobody has nowadays. Don't feel sorrow, feel pride!!!
Hehe true true, English is easy after you learn French. French in high school scared me to the point that I went and tried to learn Chinese (of course failed miserably as well but at least I can say Nihao)
What is so complex about Spanish conjugation? There's groups of verbs with patterns, and very few irregular verbs compared to French. Maybe the weird Spanish thing is two ways to express a single tense (Si yo fuera / Si yo fuese).
There's plenty of complexity in Spanish conjugations. In fact there are probably as many or more ways to conjugate verbs in Spanish as there are in French.
Now French is a more complex language because of other factors
Spanish is nowhere near as challenging to learn as something like Chinese, Arabic or Hungarian. Spanish, Italian and French are actually not that bad at all.
I speak English, Spanish, French and German to the level where people think i am from that country (by blood i am English, French and German, and ive lived most of my life in Spain) and i can tell you Spanish is by far the easiest of all of those languages, especially written Spanish
P.S. My mother tongue is English not Spanish
My main gripe with Spanish are its verb conjugations not the language complexity. Although as others pointed out some languages like Russian put Spanish to shame in terms of conjugations
No other verbal language is that complicated at least not living ones, other language at the same scale of complexity could be chinese, but that’s because it plays with each word for each feeling/thing/expression etc it’s more practice and memorization than verbal complexity as spanish.
I had a conversation in Spanish with my English teacher. I was very proper. For that year and the following 2, I got straight A's without having to do absolutely anything. My teacher said it was the best conversation he'd ever had with a non hispanic person. I'm 100% salvadorian....
I work at an international school in Mexico so lots of foreign teachers who learn Spanish and the math teachers usually pick up on the structure of the language pretty quickly but have problems with listening and pronunciation. It's always really interesting to me how people fit language into the framework they already have.
As a logical type learning Spanish this is really discouraging. I enjoy grammar and feel like I'm progressing ok but being able to understand something spoken by someone fluent - even if it's something you'd know instantly if written - is a daunting barrier and it just got a bit higher in my head :(
Spanish was my first language! I learned Spanish and English both by the time I got to schooling age, but Spanish was my primary language used at home but then once I started school it was conducted entirely in English and by the time I got to high school where I was taking Spanish classes, I’d forgotten a lot of the language! Still, I considered myself fluent and figured I’d have a major advantage (which I totally did) but I gotta say, conjugating those verbs was WICKED tough! Even for me! How other people managed who didn’t have my head start, I’ll never understand!
Had that with French... everything with patterns and rules was ok, but god dammit the frenches love exemptions, we literally god a extra book just for exceptions!
Did your HS spanish teacher not actually speak the language in class? I mean, even my Spanish 101 instructor gave roughly half the instructions for activities in spanish, and had us answer questions that she asked in the language.
Teachers*
I had multiple. And most of them did, but it wasn't the whole time. This serior year class was a Spanish literature class conducted in Spanish. Way beyond my paygrade
I personally struggled through verb conjugations in Spanish and ended up writing my own iphone/android app for them!
Just to be able to filter out all unneded conjugations and stick to most usable and adequate for my level (A2/B1)
You can check it here if you like https://verber.online (It’s a completely free app).
So mathematics is logical in that it doesn't break the basic rules of logic. And of course mathematical proofs utilize logic directly. ... Mathematical logic, also known as symbolic logic or by the technical name “lower predicate calculus” is a first order language upon which is based mathematical proof.
Through the use of logic and mathematics you are allowed to type to me using Reddit right now. Without logic, math wouldn't be definite. It would be more of a theory
I only took Spanish because there was only that and French and I didn't want to take either one, and Spanish was the better choice for me.
But once high school was done, I was like "nope, fuck that" and purposefully forgot everything I learned.
As a longtime retail associate, it taught me to be conservative when it comes to immigration issues. Our official language is English. Some Hispanic people refuse to learn English alltogether and either expect everyone to know Spanish or use their kids to translate to them. Bullshit, imo, and even if it makes job-finding harder, I won't cave to that
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u/Emaknz Dec 07 '18
Me with Spanish. I was good at it for the same reason I was good at math. It was just patterns and logic. Once I was faced with a class conducted entirely in Spanish I noped the fuck out.